Inside Indiana’s ‘Team No Sleep’ NCAA Tournament quest in Portland

PORTLAND, Ore. (WISH) — As we chronicled on early Wednesday morning, Indiana’s men’s basketball team finally made it to Portland.

Mike Woodson, the Hoosiers’ players, band (minus some instruments), and cheerleaders all fit onto the second plane provided by the NCAA. Their eventual 4 A.M. EST departure from Dayton Wednesday morning put Indiana at its downtown Portland hotel just before 7 a.m. PST. 

Is this team tired? Well, yes, because no squad playing in the NCAA Tournament First Round had a week leading up to the opening Thursday of March Madness like the Hoosiers.

The 7:20 p.m. EST tip-off Thursday evening at the Moda Center against fifth-seeded Saint Mary’s is the fifth game in eight days for Woodson’s club. Meanwhile, the Gaels are eight days removed from their loss to No. 1 overall seed Gonzaga in the West Coast Conference Championship Game. 

“I got them here, we slept in a little bit, coaches, we didn’t really sleep,” Woodson said Wednesday before Indiana’s practice in Portland. “We started prepping, getting ready for these guys to get out of bed and come down and eat a little bit, and then we walked through some things, and we’re going to go back and walk through some things. We’ll watch film and tomorrow morning, we will get up and do our normal routine and get ready to play.”

It was a bizarre week, but Woodson’s team needed it, otherwise the program which last missed five consecutive NCAA Tournaments while Bob Knight was still coaching at Army (1967-1971) would be at home watching The Big Dance from the couch for a sixth consecutive year. 

On Wednesday, Coach Woodson dished on how great teams handle fatigue. Because outside of studying Saint Mary’s, Woodson needs his locker room to weather this storm with less than 36 hours in Portland to recover from their win Tuesday night over Wyoming.

When asked, Woodson opened his basketball encyclopedia and pointed to a group that arguably is tougher than any unit we have seen hoist the Larry O’Brien trophy this millennium.

Chauncey Billups. Ben Wallace. Rip Hamilton. Rasheed Wallace. Tayshaun Prince.

Remember this lineup in Detroit?

Woodson was an assistant alongside then-head coach Larry Brown, spraying champagne on anyone they could find in the Pistons locker room to end the 2003-04 NBA season. 

“All I can do is relate to the NBA when we made the (2004) championship run in Detroit,” Woodson said. “It’s a grind, man. I’ve always said only the strong will survive. That Detroit team, man, we were so battle tested throughout the playoffs, they just refused to be tired because they were chasing that title.”

“When you look at all the good teams in March Madness, everybody wants to win a title. So, really, there is no room to be tired. I mean, you know, yeah, we had a long flight. I get it. Took us a while to get here. But we got here safely. And, you know, this is what we signed up for. We’re here to try to win a game, see if we can advance. I don’t want to go home, and I hope these guys feel the same way.”

Indiana’s junior power forward Trayce Jackson-Davis re-established himself as one of America’s best players over the past week. Since the beginning of the Big Ten Tournament, Jackson-Davis is averaging over 26 points per game while shooting over 65 percent from the field. 

He also has played at least 36 minutes per contest over those four games. 

The number one concern for Hoosiers fans Thursday night is how Jackson-Davis can keep this streak going against a Gaels post defense that held Gonzaga’s star big man Drew Timme to just eight points per game over the past two meetings. 

“We think of it as you’re going in, maybe you don’t get as much sleep as you want, but you’re playing one game, and this one game could be the last game of your season,” Jackson-Davis said Wednesday. “You don’t have time to hone in on how tired your legs are because all you want to do is win that game.”

“It’s basically whatever it takes. And maybe our legs are tired, but we’re going to play through it and play as hard as we can.”

Saint Mary’s 25-win season is a result of its stellar defense which ranks inside the top 10 units in the NCAA.

Randy Bennett’s club is a prototypical tough, savvy, veteran non-power five conference team that we often see sneak up on higher-profile programs in March.

However, Bennett’s club is no longer an unknown. This is their fifth NCAA Tournament appearance over the past decade, and their five seed in the east region marks the best seed in program history.

When asked how the Hoosiers will handle this “rugged” Gaels unit, Woodson leaned on what he just watched for 20+ games in the Big Ten.

“Every team is rugged this stage of the year. I just came through a grueling Big Ten season, man, and I mean, that was just brutal, the way they let you play and get after one another,” Woodson said. “I’ve watched St. Mary’s. They’re a hell of a team. They’re well coached. Randy (Bennett) has been a part of this program for a long, long time, and he’s seen a lot of players come and go.”

“They’ve had some good teams. This year they won 25 games. You’ve got to give them a lot of credit because they’ve had a hell of a season. We’ve got our hands full. We have to come and commit for forty minutes on both ends of the floor and see what happens.”

The winner between (12) Indiana and (5) Saint Mary’s advances to play the winner of (4) UCLA and (13) Akron Saturday in Portland.